The Guadalupe City Council unanimously renewed a temporary ban on “adult-oriented businesses” during its Jan. 27 meeting, keeping any such business out of the city for another year.
The ban was passed as an urgency ordinance and extends a similar ban passed a year ago. The original ban was passed in March 2014 and prevents businesses such as strip clubs or pornography bookstores from applying for licenses to operate in the city of a little more than 7,000 residents.
The ban was renewed in order to give the city another chance to adopt a zoning ordinance that would limit adult businesses to certain areas of the city, away from schools and churches in particular, according to city attorney Dave Fleishman.
At the meeting, Fleishman referred to an existing Guadalupe public indecency law that has “constitutional issues” and could potentially be perceived to limit free speech activities. The law prohibits engaging in sex acts and being nude in public, as well as the regular display of public nudity within a building or a portion of a building. Fleishman said a city can’t outright ban adult businesses but that Guadalupe has the land-use power to regulate them.
And although the law has a provision in it that says it’s supposed to cause the “least possible infringement” of constitutional rights, Fleishman said the law could be misconstrued as an outright ban. That’s why the city is in the process of writing new zoning code to allow for adult businesses in certain areas of Guadalupe.
Fleishman said the city can use combined urgency ordinances for up to two years to ban such businesses while he and his assistant attorney Roy Hanley draft a proper zoning ordinance.
“If you don’t have regulations, then adult businesses could locate wherever they want,” Fleishman said.
If the city fails to pass a law restricting adult businesses before the deadline in 2016, then a potential adult business owner could apply for a license to operate in any of Guadalupe’s commercial zones, not that any proprietors are clamoring to establish such businesses in the city, according to Fleishman.
The city didn’t focus on the issue last year because other problems took precedence, including the budget shortfalls that almost left the city in bankruptcy. Fleishman said he and Hanley identified the issue during an audit of the city’s ordinances.
According to Guadalupe City Administrator Andrew Carter, the city’s zoning laws only allow businesses to be placed within the two main commercial zones—general commercial or industrial commercial—both of which encompass the majority of the city’s main thoroughfare, Highway 1/Guadalupe Street. Those two zones in particular make up a relatively small area of the city, which is comprised of mostly industrial residential and industrial zones.
A handful of churches already line portions of the downtown area, including the Living Water Foursquare Church, the Calvary Chapel of Guadalupe, and the Padrecito Church, all of which sit along the city’s main drag. Commercial zones close to schools would be affected, too.
The small commercial zone along Main Street is directly across the road from Kermit McKenzie Junior High School, so an adult-oriented business would have a hard time finding a place there once an ordinance is passed. The City Council could rezone a portion of the city as conditional use for businesses outside the commercial zones, but that would depend on considerations such as sales tax ratios, said City Councilmember Ariston Julian.
“The different districts are there to control where the businesses go,” Julian said.
But why does the city want to keep adult businesses away from churches and schools? It boils down to decency and morality, Julian said. At the meeting on Jan. 27, Julian called the issue a “no brainer.”
“It’s something we need to protect the community from in case someone wanted to come in with an adult-oriented business,” Julian said.
Fleishman pointed to the “negative secondary effects” adult businesses can have on communities in the agenda report from a February 2014 council meeting, when the council last discussed the issue. He referred to several case studies, including a Los Angeles study from 1994 written by LAPD Detective Robert Navarro titled “Harmful Effects of Pornography.” Despite the so-called harmful effects on the community, the zoning discussion at hand is more of a legal issue, Fleishman told the Sun.
The city must “provide a reasonable number of locations,” Fleishman said. The exact number would depend on the analysis.
“It’s going to depend on the study of available locations,” Fleishman said. “If there’s lots and lots of locations and it’s narrowed down to one, that’s not gong to be reasonable. It’s entirely fact dependent on the study of the ordinance.”
The city is working with Rincon Consultants, a San Luis Obispo planning company, to identify locations where the businesses could go. Fleishman said he expects to present a final analysis to the City Council within three to six months.
But Guadalupe isn’t exactly advertising itself as prime real estate for adult-oriented businesses. Market research usually directs where it’s appropriate for businesses to go, according to Julian.
“Personally I don’t see it as a business that the community wants,” Julian said.
The City Council will take another vote to solidify the temporary ban during its Feb. 11 meeting.
Contact Staff Writer David Minsky at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 5-12, 2015.